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Your Favorite Directors

Published on November 01, 2001.

For our fall Directors' Special, Creativity polled a slew of creatives and broadcast producers from 25 top agencies, seeking their choices for the best directors in the following genres: Action, Comedy, Documentary, Fashion, Visual Style, Performance, Kids, Tabletop and Cars. We also tallied Overall Vote-getters and solicited entries for the Most Coveted title - i.e., which director our respondents most wanted to work with. Admittedly, categories can be a nightmare. Directors have an understandable aversion to being typecast, and many of the people we polled also took issue with having to box up their brethren. Some ignored our survey format and simply sent us lists of their faves. But what turned up in the results should at least partially quell the fears of anyone who's loath to be pigeonholed. Many of the directors were applauded not just for single but for multiple categories. The venerable Spike Jonze scored in a whopping five, and also made the list of overall top scorers. Kinka Usher, notable for his high-testosterone Mountain Dew work, and the fly-minded Microsoft XP campaign, gained recognition in both the Action and Performance genres. The directors profiled in the following pages also have a lot to say on the subject of skills-sorting. Sam Bayer wryly notes that it was his success with "intimate portraits" that opened the door to all the action work he's now known for. Others, like tabletop star Irv Blitz, make clear that success often means being expansive and open-minded in the way one approaches what in lesser hands could be nothing more than an obscure tech-intensive niche. At any rate, we salute you all. The lists, it must be noted, are presented in alphabetical order. We're not playing favorites with the favorites. Thanks to everyone who participated, and here's hoping we see you all again in 2002.